Bøker av Stanford M. Lyman

Focusing on the Cold War years, this monograph examines the processes, problems, and policies through which the Federal Republic of Germany was formed and admitted into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The author compares the situation of Weimar Germany during its short-lived postwar decade with that of the Federal Republic by applying geopolitical concepts and theory, illustrating Germany's territorial uniqueness and how that special aspect of its place on the European continent influenced the nation's diplomacy in both eras. During the late 1940s and the 1950s, the problem presented by Germany to the other NATO allies was how to secure and maintain the Federal Republic's allegiance to the anticommunist alliance without eliminating the country's desire to be reunited with its Soviet-dominated eastern section. How both NATO and Germany managed to maintain themselves in a state of dynamic equilibrium throughout the era of the Cold War illustrates the concept of international organization called "cooptation", which Lyman helped to define and expand. The epilogue explores the larger issues that the case study illuminates: global space, national territorialization, collective identity, and ethnocentrism. Considering the current conflict in the Balkans as it relates to the new Germany and the role of NATO, this far-reaching book is especially relevant with its suggestions for a basic supranational sociology.

Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, and deconstructionism are interrelated aspects of the newest theoretical development in sociology and the social sciences. This new wave of thought challenges virtually all paradigms currently in use. In this, his fifth volume in the series, Stanford M. Lyman offers commentaries on, and critiques of, this new perspective, posing questions concerning theoretical and epistemological problems arising from what appears to be a nouvelle vague. Among the basic themes and issues explored are the allegation that modernity has defaulted on the promise of the Enlightenment; the question of whether the rational basis for knowledge and action is still valid; the controversy over the place of metanarratives and macrosociological outlooks; and newer concerns over race, gender, sexual preferences, the self, and the Other. Professor Lyman provides empirically based and historically specific analyses of the relation of the race question to the problem of alterity and to the legal construction of racial identity in American court proceedings. Focusing on the issues of citizenship affecting European, Middle-Eastern and Asian immigrants; African Americans; and the special cases of the Chinese and the Native Americans, he relates major public problems to the modern as well as the postmodern perspectives on justice. The debate over assimilation and multiculturalism, the dynamics of gender-specific emotions as expressed in six decades of Hollywood films, and the postmodern approach to deviance are each examined. Proposals are offered for a social science attuned to, but critical of, postmodernism and poststructuralism. Such a sociology might offer a perspective thattreats the drama of social relations in both of its forms -- the routine as well as the remarkable aspects of everyday life. Professor Lyman provides not only a new understanding of postmodernism but also a program of how to proceed with respect to its challenges.